Despite all of the Mac vs. PC arguments, many people will agree that Macintosh OS X looks really cool. The dock, the wallpaper, the smoothness. Everything just seems to flow together so seamlessly. For those out there who don’t own a Mac (like me and roughly 95% of the population), there is a way to make your PC look somewhat like a Mac. Sure, you won’t get all of the built-in features like software, hardware, etc., but with a little bit of tweaking, you can make your PC look astonishingly like a Mac.

Here’s a few screen shots of what my finished Mac-ified PC looks like:

With Stardock's ObjectDock™, hiding the Windows Taskbar, and cleaning up the desktop icons, you can get the Mac-ish feel

As you can see, I have a dock on the bottom, which is incredibly smooth. On the right side, it displays all of your currently open applications. This dock, called ObjectDock, is supplied by Stardock, the makers of some pretty slick software. At the time of this writing, you can download ObjectDock here: http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

The ObjectDock has many features. To access them, click on the “Configure Dock” button which resides on the dock.

Here is how I got my machine setup after downloading StarDock:

1. Get some wallpaper. I got it from http://thedailymac.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/space-desktop.png. You will probably need to convert it to a .jpg to get it to work, though.


With my Windows Taskbar set to Auto-hide, I can access all of the standard Windows functions.

2. Next, move your Windows Task Bar to the top of your monitor. Also, set it to auto-hide (right-click the taskbar -> Properties -> Check “Auto-hide the taskbar”). That way, you can primarily use the dock, but have the ability to access the Windows task bar if you need it.
3. Clean up and move your desktop icons. I’ve never seen a Mac with lots of icons cluttering it. Clean up the ones you don’t use. I actually have a folder on my desktop where I put my miscellaneous files. I find that this makes it easier to organize my desktop. If you want to completely hide all of your icons right click anywhere on the desktop, and under the “View” menu uncheck “Show Desktop Icons”. This doesn’t delete them, but simply hides them.


The ObjectDock has many options, including customizable zoom on hover

4. Within the dock itself, there are numerous settings you can adjust. It’s pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll let you play around with it. Feel free to comment with specific questions.

And with that, you now have a Mac-itized computer. There are many more things your can do to add to the feel, like adding Mac mouse cursors, getting the Safari 4 Beta, and of course, iTunes.

Do you have any ways you like to alter your Windows computer? The comments are open for you to share the various ways you add some additional flavor to your Windows experience.